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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564207">Stars Falling</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMonsters2/pseuds/MissMonsters2'>MissMonsters2</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Fluff, soft angst, tw: abuse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:41:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,074</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25564207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMonsters2/pseuds/MissMonsters2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt Request: Hold my hand tight, I'll protect you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Natasha Romanov/Reader, natasha Romanoff/reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>101</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Natasha Romanoff Reader Inserts</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stars Falling</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Warnings: Mentions of abuse, wounds, and blood. Abuse may be interpreted in different ways. You might cry cuz it’s soff.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>Sometimes you think how wonderful it might be if you were born a star instead. </p><p>To be hung in the dark sky, a sight to be seen. </p><p>And when all is said and done, you’ll become something else as you fall under the weight of gravity. </p><p>But you’re not a star. </p><p>And you’re painfully aware of it every day. </p><p>“Don’t tell me you’re still holding hope." </p><p>You feel your jaw get roughly grasped, pulled in the direction to look at the sneering face at you. </p><p>"Let me remind you,” the director tilts her head, “you’ll never make it out of here.”</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>You stayed in the locked room for what feels like hours, but you know only at most it’s only been two. You’ve gotten good at it. </p><p>Counting. </p><p>There probably used to be a time where you would sing songs to pass the time, but now you’ve learned how to count the seconds instead.</p><p>You hear the door jiggle, and you tense. </p><p>But the footsteps are familiar, and you feel the soft touch of concern, and you know who it is.</p><p>She does this every time without fail because otherwise, you may be left in this room for days. </p><p>“What are you doing?” You rasp. “If she finds out you’ve stolen the keys, you’ll get a lashing again, Nat.”</p><p>Natasha clenches her jaw as she picks you off the floor, pulling one of your arms around her shoulder as she helps you leave the room. </p><p>“I don’t care,” Natasha grits. </p><p>Natasha has plenty of more words to say, but she doesn’t think she can’t get them out without screaming. </p><p>In all honesty, the lashing Natasha would get would be nowhere near as bad as what you’ve endured. She carries you past the bedroom, and you look in briefly at the rows upon rows of beds, and it’s another reminder of where you are.</p><p>It isn’t until Natasha brings you to the washroom, setting you gently down on the floor that you lean over the edge of the tub with your back facing Natasha.</p><p>You hear Natasha’s breath hitch, and you’re surprised she still makes that noise.</p><p>After all, it’s not like the sight is unfamiliar to her. </p><p>Grabbing a cloth and filling a bucket with water, Natasha sits quietly down behind you. She knows you hate it when she looks sad, so Natasha stills her emotions.</p><p>There’s blood all over your back. It looks worse when you’re wearing a white shirt that’s been ripped and pulled at. Natasha grabs the shirt’s material, ripping it the rest of the way because there’s no way she could pull it off from you without causing more pain. </p><p>She sets it aside as your back is bare before her, but she can’t appreciate it with the dried blood and lashes. </p><p>Natasha breathes slowly as she grabs the cloth, soaking it in the water and ringing it before she puts it against your back as she cleans you slowly.</p><p>It’s always silent when Natasha takes care of you, even as she disinfects the wounds before bandaging you up.</p><p>“Where is Allison?” Your voice is still hoarse. </p><p>“Sleeping,” Natasha answers quietly. </p><p>“Did they like her?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Natasha breathes out. “They’re going to come back tomorrow to finish the adoption papers for her." </p><p>You hum. </p><p>"They didn’t ask for you again,” Natasha says after a moment of silence.</p><p>“That’s good,” you say tiredly. </p><p>That’s how today’s beating had started, after all. </p><p>You’ve been here at the orphanage longer than anyone has, practically all your life. </p><p>You’ve grown up here with the director in this sick place, with her sick tendencies. </p><p>You were determined to be a wallflower until you could leave.</p><p>Until Natasha came here when you were 15.</p><p>Then you had someone to protect. </p><p>And you decided that it was better to be you than her. </p><p>You had grown to accept that you weren’t going to be adopted. As you grew older, you knew the chances grew slimmer. But you were okay with that because you would never allow yourself to leave Natasha here alone.</p><p>There were even times you made yourself extremely unattractive to prospective parents who seemed interested in you. </p><p>But for some reason, the prospective parents that came today seemed a little insistent on you, even if you acted like a problem child. </p><p>They were interested in you and Allison, coming back multiple times as if to try to charm you into liking them.</p><p>That seemed to set off the director because that woman was set on having you by her side forever. She truly thinks you’ll stay here, work here, and grow old until you die with her within this place.</p><p>Perhaps you would’ve resigned to that if Natasha didn’t come along. </p><p>But now you’re just shy of being 18 to be able to leave and take Natasha along with you. </p><p>You chant the same words you’ve been chanting since Natasha’s come here.</p><p>
  <em>Turn 18, get a job, get a place, and take Natasha far away from here. </em>
</p><p>It wouldn’t be right away. You’d still have to stay here a little even after turning 18 because you know you can’t just take Natasha.</p><p>That woman would find you.</p><p>She would find you and take Natasha back to destroy you. </p><p>You needed to do it the right way so Natasha couldn’t be taken from you.</p><p>
  <em>Turn 18, get a job, get a place, and take Natasha far away from here. </em>
</p><p>“Hey.”</p><p>You turn your head and blink as Natasha’s face comes into view. </p><p>You find yourself all cleaned up and bandaged, and Natasha strokes your cheekbone softly.</p><p>“Let’s go to bed, okay?" </p><p>You nod, standing up with her help as she takes off her cardigan to wrap it around you.</p><p>The place is dark, not a sound to be heard, not a single light on, but the two of you have memorized this place like the back of your hand. </p><p>You enter the bedroom quietly because many children have already fallen far asleep into slumberland, and you don’t dare to wake them up.</p><p>As you get to the last bed in the back, you get in slowly as Natasha follows next to you. </p><p>Everyone gets a small twin-sized bed, but Natasha has long stopped sleeping in hers as she presses her body close to yours.</p><p>Natasha pulls the blanket up until it reaches just after your shoulder. </p><p>Lying there, face to face, Natasha licks her lips. You blink languidly as you reach your hand up to cup her cheek, watching her eyes flutter closed as she savors your touch. </p><p>"She can’t keep doing this to you,” Natasha shakily whispers. </p><p>You merely use your thumb to stroke her cheekbone, dragging your face across the pillow until your lips hit hers. </p><p>Dry and chapped, but still soft. </p><p>You pull back as you entangle your legs with Natasha, pulling her as close as you can to you.</p><p>“I rather her do this to me than to you, do you understand?” You murmur. </p><p>And Natasha hates it. She hates it so much. She hates that you shield her from the horrible things that could’ve been done to her. </p><p>But she knows you would protect her no matter the cost. </p><p>“I love you,” Natasha’s words vibrate against your lips as her eyes sting.</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>Natasha watches from afar as she’s holding the broom, idly sweeping the stairs. </p><p>It’s another one of those days. </p><p>“Come to my room,” the director gazes upon you as she beckoned you towards her.</p><p>Natasha watches you put down your bucket and sponge as you walk towards her with your eyes lowered. </p><p>Natasha grips the broom tightly in her hands.</p><p>She can hear the worst in the room, but you don’t make any noise anymore. You know that it breaks Natasha’s heart, so you’ve learned to grit your teeth or bite your tongue instead. </p><p>You’re doing this to protect her, but why does Natasha feel like a coward every time?</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>The wounds have only started to heal, but Natasha picks you up with fresh ones. </p><p>Something ugly festers within Natasha as she looks at your back. </p><p>It’s not fair. </p><p>It’s not <em>fair</em>.</p><p>You blink slowly as you lean over the edge of the tub on your arm. You stare at the shampoo in the corner as Natasha cleans your wounds.</p><p>The cuts sting, but you don’t show it, you don’t think you even know how to show it hurts anymore…but Natasha just looks at you, placing her head next to yours as she grasps your fingers gently.</p><p>You lift the corners of your mouth slowly. </p><p>“If you keep looking like that, I won’t let you clean my wounds anymore,” you mean it as a joke, mostly because Natasha is the only one who can do it. There’s no way you’d subject the other kids to this. </p><p>But Natasha only holds your hand tighter. </p><p>“Hey,” she whispers. “What’s the first thing you want to do when we get out of here?”</p><p>You hum, your mouth falling into a more relaxed smile as you allow the small luxury of daydreaming. </p><p>“I want to sleep under the open sky. Wouldn’t it be nice, Nat? To see the millions and millions of stars above us.” You close your eyes, missing how Natasha bites her lips. </p><p>She helps you back to bed, pulling the covers up as you fall into a peaceful sleep. </p><p>But Natasha knows. </p><p>She knows you’re running thin, and Natasha’s not sure how much longer you can take it.</p><p>Waiting until one of you turns 18? </p><p>Natasha mentally scoffs. </p><p>The two of you won’t make it.</p><p>It was just a fantasy of turning 18 would change anything here, and Natasha’s rude awakening came since the day those people came and were interested in you and Allison. </p><p>The director would never let you go. </p><p>Natasha’s sure that she would rather kill you than to see you leave, and it would all too easy to cover up a missing kid from an orphanage. </p><p>Natasha gazes at your sleeping face, mouth slightly open as you doze. She delicately brushes her fingers through your hair, soft as you mumble somewhat at the feeling before you shift closer to her. </p><p>Natasha can’t protect you in here, she’s painfully aware.</p><p>And if that’s the case, then she’ll take her chances out there.</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>It’s a few weeks that the two of you get some peace within these walls. The director seems to be aware that your wounds need to heal before she can do anything.</p><p>And Natasha is waiting for you to heal as well, diligently taking care of you and changing your bandages and applying medication every day.</p><p>The two of you seem to be always able to tell when the director will soon call you. </p><p>She gets agitated, seeking you out more to do work in front of her. Her eyes trail you like a hawk as she comes out of her office to inspect your cleaning. </p><p>Natasha stares through the slits of her eyes in the back unnoticed. </p><p>With Natasha’s help, you’ve healed faster, but the director doesn’t seem to have noticed, but she’s getting impatient.</p><p>Even if you are not fully healed, she will most likely call for you again tonight. </p><p>But Natasha won’t let that happen. Blinking once before she pushes against the wall upright and turns, she slides discreetly into the director’s office. She pulls out the three sleeping pills she stole from the volunteer who had come four months ago and stayed most nights with the children. </p><p>Placing them on the table, she crushes them into powder with a paperweight quickly before she pours it into the cup of tea the director has out on her desk. </p><p>Stirring it with the teabag, Natasha carefully sets everything back the way she found it and slides back out unnoticed. </p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>“Baby, wake up.”</p><p>You groggily open your eyes to see Natasha kneeling beside your bed at your head.</p><p>“Why aren’t you in bed?” You murmur as Natasha pulls your cover. You had told her to sleep in her own bed tonight because you had a feeling the director would come in and call you to her room. </p><p>But you must’ve fallen asleep waiting for that because you could see it was 1 AM.</p><p>“We’re leaving,” Natasha tells you as she stands up, whispering, so she doesn’t wake the other kids.  </p><p>You sit up with your brows furrowed as you rub your eye.</p><p>“What?" </p><p>"We’re leaving,” Natasha repeats, grabbing your hand as she pulls out of bed. </p><p>It had taken some time to wait for the cooks and custodians to go to bed, but the house was quiet now. </p><p>And it was now or never. </p><p>Natasha has a small duffle bag of your things, the two of you not having much despite how long you’ve been living here. </p><p>“What are you talking about?” You feel yourself waking up more now as Natasha quietly drags you through the hallways and down the stairs. </p><p>She doesn’t answer you as Natasha lifts opens the window on the main floor that she left just slightly open during the day.</p><p>The alarms would go off if she tried any of the doors, and this was the one window that seemed to have a glitch in it if left open even if they set the alarms. </p><p>Natasha throws the duffle bag out the window.</p><p><em>“Natasha!”</em> You harshly whisper as you grip her wrist to look at you. “This isn’t the plan.”</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em> the plan!” She whispers heatedly at you. “You’ll <em>die</em> before the plan even happens!”</p><p>You blink at her as Natasha huffs. </p><p>“I know,” Natasha says quietly. “I know we’re only 17, and it’ll be so much harder to survive out there if we leave now. But I rather take those chances than to watch slowly die by that woman’s hands!”</p><p>Natasha shakes her head, running her hands through the sides of her head as she grips her hair, looking at the floor.</p><p>“I can’t,” Natasha breathes, “I can’t watch you keep shielding me when I know you’re scared too.”</p><p>“So please,” Natasha begs, “please run away with me while we can.”</p><p>You look at your girlfriend, tired and defeated, but desperate for you. Lifting your hands to hold Natasha’s as you nudge her to let go of her hair as you pull her hands towards you.</p><p>“Alright,” you press a kiss to her knuckles. “Alright.”</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>You’ve been walking for miles. </p><p>Holding Natasha’s hand as she carries the duffle bag she refuses to let you hold, you’ve been walking for miles. </p><p>It would be foolish to take a cab or try to take one of the cars the workers leave here, so you’ve been going on foot. </p><p>It isn’t until you’ve hit a completely different neighborhood that Natasha begins looks around cars parked outside.</p><p>Natasha seems to be looking for something specific as she stumbles onto an old pickup truck. Taking a knife out of the duffle bag Natasha stole from the kitchen, she begins to cut around the gasket around the window. She pulls the window up before she reaches her hand inside to unlock the door. </p><p>Throwing her duffle bag in the back, she gestures for you to get into the passenger side. </p><p>Natasha then pulls out a screwdriver from the duffle bag, and you watch her get to work, and within minutes, you hear the pickup truck start. </p><p>She pulls out of the driveway, taking off quietly down the road.</p><p>You had known Natasha had a questionable past before she was dropped off at the orphanage, but watching her do it was completely different.</p><p>Still, you had a felt a peace fall over you as you watched the houses get tinier in the side view mirrors.</p><p>⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⋆⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷</p><p>It’s another couple of hours before Natasha comes to a stop in the middle of nowhere. </p><p>Long having left the city, you were surprised she came to a stop already.</p><p>“Are you tired? Do you want to switch?” You ask. </p><p>You still see there’s half a tank of gas left, but you still wondered how you’ll get more gas or if the two of you will have to find a new car to steal instead. </p><p>Natasha shakes her head. “Let’s both rest for a little bit.”</p><p>She opens the car door, walking around until she reaches your side and unlocks your door. </p><p>You take her hand as you gently get off as she guides you to the truck’s back. She puts on foot on the bumper before hauling herself over, holding her hand out to pull you over too. </p><p>Once inside, you find a small blanket that Natasha spreads out before lying down. </p><p>You tentatively lie next to her. </p><p>On your back, you look up at the night sky.</p><p>Being in the middle of nowhere with few streetlights, you find you can see the night sky well. </p><p>
  <em>“I want to sleep under the open sky. Wouldn’t it be nice, Nat? To see the millions and millions of stars above us." </em>
</p><p>You look over at Natasha, who is looking up at the sky as well. You swallow, feeling the emotions bubble up inside you, threatening to rage over. </p><p>"Nat,” you call, voice thick with emotion. </p><p>She doesn’t turn to look at you, though, continuing to look at the sky.</p><p>“I don’t really understand your obsession with the stars,” Natasha says quietly. </p><p>You turn your head to look back up. </p><p>“I like that there’s so many,” you slowly say. “There’s an infinite amount of stars. There’s a whole galaxy, an entire universe out there. We must look so tiny in comparison to them. Everything seems so big and overwhelming here.”</p><p>Natasha doesn’t say anything. She’s not really sure what to say because to her, you’re her entire universe.</p><p>The only star hung in her galaxy. </p><p>“I’m not going to lie, Nat,” you say after a long silence. “I don’t know what to do from here.”</p><p>Because in there, you knew very well how to keep Natasha safe. Out here, you had no plan.</p><p>Natasha turns over to you on her side, much rather looking at you than the night sky. </p><p>You were a falling star back there, but out here, Natasha would do whatever it took to keep you hanging in the sky. </p><p>And under the stars, with all the bruises and cuts, and nothing but the clothes on their back, Natasha holds your hand. </p><p>
  <em>
    <b>“Hold my hand tight, I’ll protect you.”</b>
  </em>
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